D-I-Wine: Banksy Inspired Wall Art DIY With British Paints Retouch

I love urban art. I love coming across little pockets of beauty in the urban landscape. My love affair started when I was travelling Europe. There are so many little pockets in each city, from Belgium to Belfast. My hus-bang and I would make a competition of looking for the Space Invader in each city we visited (I usually won, being the more observant and more competitive one). Did you know Perth has its very own Space Invader? If you haven’t seen it, it’s on a bridge over a very busy city road…

Perth has been following suit with the Form project, and some other cool little initiatives from people who own big, blank walls throughout the city. Have you taken a walk around Leederville? Or down Beaufort Street? Go a little bit more residential and there’s art as far as Rockingham and Bunbury.

My own little urban art project I refer to as ‘urban lite’. There are some awesome spray paint colours available at The Butcher Shop, but having used spray paint in a community project before, I wanted to use something a little more forgiving for my own indoor wall.

British Paints have this awesome product called ‘Retouch’. It’s designed to be used to re-paint nicks in walls in the average house, and it only costs $9.95 at Bunnings, but what it can also be used for is ‘urban lite street art’!

After much deliberation, I decided to make a Banksy- inspired piece. Have you seen his panda? I’m not as enamoured of panda’s as I am of squirrels, so that was my animal of choice. And, for my witty stab at ‘the man’, I’ve chosen to go with ‘Do or D-I-Y’ as my catch call.

I’ve made a video of the project here, with my customary glass of wine and laugh inducing moments.

A couple of things about using Retouch:

Don’t shake the can, man! There’s a big warning label on the box, but I wasn’t able to help myself and gave it a good old shake, so I had to go and buy another one.

When the can gets cold, it stops working. Don’t panic. The atomiser just needs to warm up again. Stop and wait, then go again.

British Paints Retouch ($9.95, avialable at Bunnings), black paint, stencil paper, pencil, pencil, scalpel, cutting mat, tape.

Approx $30 with all new paint.

2 hours.

If you’re coming from the video and wanting to know how I made my stencil, read on...

I’m not the best at drawing squirrels freehand, so I took an image from the internet and stuck a hot glue gun on it, then put that next to my text, then printed it out.

Stick the print out on a window with good lighting, and tape the stencil paper over the top. Trace the outline of the image onto the stencil paper.

This is where your imagination comes in. I looked back and forth from the Banksy panda while I drew the lines on my squirrel. I used jagged lines on the tail to show the fluffiness of the fur, and took liberties with the hot glue gun because you can’t have too many fine details in a stencil before losing the intent of the image.